Monday, January 19, 2009

The Shape of Things to Come Across Europe

... as the US devours all the investment money in sight to pay for stimuloids.
Jan. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Spain had its AAA sovereign credit rating removed by Standard & Poor’s in the second downgrade of a euro-region government in five days, as the country’s first recession in 15 years swelled the budget deficit.
Why is the budget deficit rising? There's a mandatory portion as they try to stabilize their banks and there's an elective portion as they enact their own pointless stimulus packages.
The cost of economic stimulus packages and bank bailouts is boosting budget deficits around the euro-region, fueling concern governments will have difficulty paying their debt. S&P cut Greece’s rating one step to A- on Jan. 14. A day earlier, it threatened to downgrade Portugal’s debt. S&P also reduced the outlook on Ireland’s rating to negative from stable.
I wonder who will be the first to wake up to the idiocy of borrow and spend.

2 comments:

Rose said...

Friends who were in Europe as this whole debacle has unfolded say the view of the Europeans is that we will recover fairly quickly while the devastation wreaked on the rest of the world will take up to 10 years to fix. They seem to see us coming out of it in a year or two.

ternchi

Anonymous said...

Stimuloids. I like that. Do they come in an attractive little tin box emblazoned with "Curiously Feckless"?